Some Thoughts on the Development of the de Grey Mausoleum, Flitton

Abstract

The de Grey Mausoleum at Flitton, Bedfordshire, a cruciform building attached to the north-east side of Flitton church, was passed into the care of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works in 1977 by Lady Lucas, a descendant of the de Grey Family. A number of articles have been written about the building and its monuments, notably one by the English Heritage Inspector John Neale in 2003, and another by the present author in 2013. The present article looks in further detail at the evidence for its structural development, including the layout of the first phase (c.1605–14) for Henry, 6th Earl of Kent; documentary sources and structural details of the second phase (1705 and possibly later) for Henry, then 12th Earl and later 1st Duke of Kent; and decorations for the third phase (c.1833–59) for Thomas, 2nd Earl de Grey.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writer would like to thank the Vicar and Churchwardens of St John the Baptist, Flitton, Dr Raihana Ehsanulluah, Dr Sally Jeffery, Dr Julian Litten, Jenny Milledge, Richard Hewlings, John Philips, John Neale, Dr Adam White, Graham Deacon and Keith Austin of English Heritage Archives, Martin Deacon and Laura Johnson of the Bedford and Luton Archives Service, who also gave permission for the use of quotations from their archives, and finally Emma Ratcliff, who had to live in a ménage-à-trois during the speed-writing of this article.

Notes

1 John Neale, ‘“Very properly buried”; monuments in the De Grey mausoleum’, in English Heritage Collections Review, IV, 2003, 75–80; Andrew Skelton, ‘The monument to Lord Harrold at Flitton, Beds’, Georgian Group Journal, XXII, 2014, 45–52.

2 London, British Library (hereafter BL), Add MS 17,456, fo. 34.

3 BL, Add MS 48,977, fo. 407. For the Harrold monument see Skelton, op. cit.

4 Bedford and Luton Archive Service (hereafter BLAS), L31/106, Journal of Catherine Talbot at Wrest, entry for 12 June 1745.

5 Henry’s father, Sir Harry Grey (d. 1545) inherited very little and his title to the earldom was reported to the king as suspect [GW Bernard ‘The fortunes of the Greys, earls of Kent in the early sixteenth century’, Historical Journal, XXV, pt 3, 1982, 685].

6 As recounted by (amongst others) Thomas Pennant, Journey from Chester to London, Dublin, 1783, 407.

7 BL, Add MS 5,830, fo. 191v, Dr J Boule (hereafter cited as Boule), A sermon preached at Flitton in the Countie of Bedford At the Funerall of the Right Honourable Henerie Earl of Kent, the sixteenth of March 1614, London, 1615. Thomas Archer, the Rector of nearby Houghton, recorded the service in his diary ‘The Rt Honourable Henry Earl of Kent . . . was most honourably buried with all solemnitie fitting his calling at Flitton in Bedfordshire in the new chappell, which he himself built in his lyfetime. This worthie gentleman caused his tomb to be made and finished in his lifetime . . . his funeral sermon was conducted by Dr Boule, whose text was ‘‘Lord, lettest they servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for my eyes have seen thy salvation’’’, Add MS 5830, fo. 191, opp.

8 Revd D Lysons and Samuel Lysons, Magna Britannica, being a concise topographical account of the several counties of Great Britain, I, London, 1806, 85.

9 The monument was half a cenotaph; as the body of the earl’s wife had been buried at Great Gaddesden, Hertfordshire, some 35 years earlier, ‘which neccessitie did enforce; yet all that Jacob could do for Rachel, he hath done for her, in joining her pillar upon his own sepulchre, making one individual monument for them both, in this Chappell, to testifie to all the world that happy union, of which, neither life or death could make a distinction. Such was his Lady, such was their love’ (Boule, op. cit.).

10 This monument is recorded there in early 19th-century descriptions (e.g., BL, Add MS 17,456, fo. 34; and BL, Add MS 48,977, fo. 407) before the work of the Earl de Grey.

11 Julian Litten, The English Way of Death, The Common Funeral Since 1450, London, 1991, 207.

12 The monuments were in their present position by 1811; BL, Add MS 17,456, fo. 32, opposite.

13 This effect is almost completely obscured by the installation of the present wooden and glass-panelled door and screen.

14 The reasoning behind the decision to site Lady Hart’s monument across the doorway in favour of the vacant spot east of the arch is unclear, but may suggest that by the 1670s a gate through that arch was already being used and the doorway was thus considered obsolete. The origins of the neatly reset tracery within the blocking is unexplained.

15 Flitton, monumental inscription.

16 London, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), PROB 11/469/142, proved 19 March 1703.

17 No less than four earls and members of their immediate families had been buried in the room since 1615.

18 Quoted in T Hudson, ‘A ducal patron of architects’; Country Life, CLV, 17 January 1974, 78.

19 BLAS, L28/19, dated 19 August 1704.

20 BLAS, L31/289, Account Book 1701–6.

21 Ibid., fo. 343.

22 Ibid., fo. 345. William Bishop’s team included George Bishop, William Bacon, Theodor, Willson, Wheeler, Peck, Edward Bishop, Edward Bishop junior, Raken, Charles Turner and Smart. Thomas Bishop’s team included Peter Land, John Hays, Abel Bayley, John Richardson, Edward Hays, John Land, Thomas Coats, Clem Coats, Robert Cooke, Samuel Lining or Chining, Abraham Baly, Joseph Bonner, Edward Hays, Thomas Fuller, John Striviner, Thomas Evins, Abraham Evins, Edward Hare and John Hare.

23 Ibid., fos 347, 350, 353.

24 Ibid., fo. 354.

25 Ibid., fo. 358.

26 Ibid., fo. 353.

27 Ibid., fo. 360.

28 Ibid., fo. 362.

29 Ibid., fo. 363.

30 Ibid., fo. 366.

31 Ibid., fo. 368.

32 Ibid., fo. 371.

33 Ibid., fo. 385.

34 Ibid., fo. 393.

35 Donald Findlay, FLITTON, St John the Baptist; proposed transfer of the de Grey Mausoleum to the Guardianship of the Department of the Environment, 1977, 3.

36 Neale, op. cit., 77–78; Gentleman’s Magazine, 91.1, 1821, opposite 393; BL, Add MS 36,356, fo. 43, J C Buckler, ‘South East view of Flitton church, Bedfordshire’, 26 May 1831.

37 Neale, op. cit., 77. His further suggestion that the illustration in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1821 is evidence for the building of the south chapel south wall in stone as a further attempt to integrate the new building with the old is unlikely; a comparison of this illustration with one by the same engraver (J Barnett) of Rendelsham church in the same volume shows this to be a standard form of depicting wall surface areas, regardless of differences in building materials; see Gentleman’s Magazine, 1821, 1, opposite 105.

38 BLAS, L31/291, Account Book, Household, garden, etc., 1709–17. The smiths named are John Allen, William Carter from Ampthill, (fos 101, 182), and Crawley (fos 217, 234).

39 John Neale, pers. comm.

40 Findlay, op. cit., 3.

41 LC Halpern, ‘Wrest Park 1686–1730s, exploring Dutch influence’, Garden History, XXX, part 2, 2002, 137.

42 TNA, PROB 11/703/148, will of Henry, Duke of Kent (Probate 13/6/1740).

43 Swindon, English Heritage, Archives (hereafter EH Archives), MP/DGM0006 (formerly AB1/3), AR Wittrick, survey of burial vaults, December 1985.

44 EH Archives, photographs F850040/3, September 1985 (south vault); and Gen Ref FL00744, no date, but probably September 1985 (east and north vaults).

45 BLAS, P12/2/2/21, letter from Anne, Lady Lucas, to the Revd PJ Millam, Vicar of Flitton, 24 March 1971.

46 EH Archives, De Grey Mausoleum MP/DGM0010 (formerly AB1/4), ‘GS’, timber repair details, January 2002.

47 AJ Arnold, RE Howard and CD Litton, Tree-Ring Analysis of Timbers from the de Grey Mausoleum, St John the Baptist, Flitton, Bedfordshire, English Heritage, Centre for Archaeology, Report 48/2003. I am grateful to John Neale for discussing this with me at short notice.

48 Gentleman’s Magazine, I, 1821, opposite 393; BL, Add MS 36,356, fo. 43. Powell’s small sketch plan of the church and mausoleum, drawn in 1811, clearly shows a monument placed centrally against the south chapel south wall (BL, Add MS 17,456, opposite fo. 32).

49 It is possible that this adoption had occurred before his succession to the property; the burials of his children date from 1817.

50 BLAS, L26/901. The bill lists the provision of copper cramps, dowels, nuts and bolts and the sharpening of chisels.

51 C Pickford, ‘Bedfordshire churches in the nineteenth century, part 1, parishes A to G’, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, LXXIII, 1994, 299, quoting Northampton Mercury, 26 July 1845, ‘W.A.’, article on the church.

52 C Read, Earl de Grey, London, 2007, 16, 34–35.

53 A later use of gothic tracery in a similar context is to be found in the fenestration of the Cecil chapel attached to St Mary’s church, Wimbledon, built in 1626–36 (Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry, The Buildings of England, London, 2, South, London, 1983, 452).

54 Susan Jenkins, Portrait of a Patron, the Patronage and Collection of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1674–1744), 2007, Aldershot, 174; CH Collins Baker and MI Collins Baker, The Life and Circumstances of James Brydges, Duke of Chandos, Oxford, 1949, 413–17.

55 BL Burney Collection of Newspapers, London Daily Post and General Advertizer, 1 May 1738, ‘a monument, sacred to the memory of the late Viscountess Glenorchy, is preparing to be put up at Flitton, within two miles of Wrest in Bedfordshire’. Lady Glenorchy, the duke’s eldest daughter and mother of his eventual heiress, had died in 1727.

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Andrew Skelton

Andrew Skelton works for Royal Mail as a manual worker but is also an occasional archaeologist and historian with particular knowledge of north Surrey and south London. He has published articles on architectural, monumental and landscape subjects.